Daddy declared the old family barn too decrepit to remain safely standing, so we spent the weekend with Granddaddy Sloane while Daddy cleared it out prior to demolition. Granddaddy Sloane is Daddy’s grandfather. His little yellow house is surrounded by trees, a field with a cow pond, and the blue barn. He was against tearing down the old barn, but he was not given much of a say.
Daddy tucked a box of heavy-duty trash bags under his arm and we followed him to the barn. He swung the great doors open, and we all stood silent.
After a long look Mama said she and Bethany would sit inside with Granddaddy Sloane and comfort him in his loss. I offered to stay, and Mama made me put on heavy canvas gloves then told me not to touch anything. I wondered why, if I wasn’t to touch anything, those gloves were necessary. “Just keep them on,” she insisted. “You can handle anything that isn’t sharp, rusty, or splintery. Stay close to the open door, and keep an eye on your father.”
That went over fine. Daddy dearly loves an audience. He said, “Dixie can bear witness to my thoroughness and dispatch in clearing out this barn.”
The old tractor and other farm machinery had been sold and removed. Daddy walked inside the barn and took an inventory before beckoning me inside. Two rows of shelves beside the open door held empty brown glass bottles. Daddy held one of the bottles to the light. It appeared full of trapped clouds. “Granddaddy used to doctor his own cows,” Daddy explained. “See the lines on the side? Each represents a dose of oh, I don’t know, say, Osborne’s Celebrated Cow Purgative and Tonic. Dixie, hitch up your gloves and start putting the bottles into that empty box for me. Thank you, dear heart.”
Daddy began pulling out some of the more dangerous items and putting them in trash bags. He found a U-shaped length of pipe hanging on a nail, looked inside and said, “Frog! Should I blow him out?”
Before I could say no he proceeded to blow hard into one end of the pipe, sending not one but two tiny frogs sailing out the opposite end and through the door of the barn. They were the prettiest little things, like pieces of bright green jewelry. Quick as a wink they hopped back into the barn.
While I stacked bottles in the box, Daddy carried out cans of old paint and put them off to the side. We took a break when Mama brought us some lemonade. She asked how the job was going. Daddy had a cobweb tangled in one eyebrow and dirt on his forehead where he’d tried to swat it away. “I will admit that the charm has worn off,” he said.
When Mama returned to the house I told Daddy he ought to do like Tom Sawyer did, in the book he’d read to me over a year of bedtimes. “How so?” he asked. I reminded him about Tom whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence and how he convinced the other boys to help him. Daddy stared at me, walked into the barn and looked around, then came back out. “Dixie, you are my girl,” he whispered. He took out his phone, looked up a number, and made a call, walking off to stand in the shade as he talked.
After snapping his phone shut, Daddy grew lively again. He brought a few things from the barn for his keeper pile, including a little wooden stool that he dusted off with his hand and gave to me.
A pick-up truck pulled in and bumped over the yard to the front of the barn. A sign on the truck read, “Digby’s Architectural Salvage.” I sat on the little stool, and Daddy winked at me.
Daddy talked up a storm as he led Mr. Digby into the barn. When they came out, they carried an old wooden door between them and put it in the bed of the truck. They made several more trips before Mr. Digby stopped to make a phone call. Ten minutes later another truck pulled up, and two young men started hauling stuff out of the barn.
I looked up toward the house once and saw Mama come out on the back porch, watch the goings-on for a minute, and shake her head.
After the men drove away, Mama walked out from the house with more cold lemonade. “Not that you could possibly be thirsty,” she said, “seeing as how you contracted out the hard labor.”
“Selling is a thirsty business,” Daddy said. He finished counting a thick wad of bills and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “And you will be gratified to hear that no one was hurt, stung, bitten, or cut during this entire operation.” He took a long drink of lemonade, and added thoughtfully, “The little frogs might be tender for a day or two.”
He showed Mama the little old stool I’d been using, and said, “Granddaddy made that stool from a walnut tree that used to stand near the house. If this wood could talk, it might tell you the entire story of my misspent boyhood.”
Daddy carried the stool back to the house. Granddaddy Sloane sat in a recliner in the kitchen, watching Bethany in her portable playpen. Daddy set the stool down next to the recliner and straddled it. “Granddaddy,” he said, “the barn is cleaned out and you just made chunk of money. What do you think about that?”
Granddaddy took the wad of bills and looked at it. “You keep it, Frank,” he said. “You did the work.”
But Daddy scoffed and pushed the money away, said, “No, now, I mostly supervised, once Dixie explained the right way to handle the job. This is yours. I’ll carry it to the bank for you. Now I would love to have this walnut stool, if that’s all right.” He stood up and lifted the stool to show Grand-daddy, who reached out a twisted hand to touch it. His hand curled around one leg.
“Must the old barn come down, Frank?” Granddaddy Sloane asked.
Daddy’s voice gentled. “Yes, Granddaddy, it really must.” For a long minute they stayed like that, Daddy holding the stool by one leg, Granddaddy Sloane holding another. I saw the old long-away-gone walnut tree grow between them to shade the kitchen. A boy sat in a fork of the tree reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but the top of the tree was growing fast, bursting through the kitchen ceiling and reaching up into the blue sky until I couldn’t see the boy at all among the thick green leaves, so far up above had it grown. The roots of the walnut tree cracked the kitchen floor tiles and reached deep into the dark earth below the foundation of the house, curling and spreading wide with a rumbling sound.
I thought I must be asleep and dreaming, but I knew that my heart was awake.
END
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